


Conflict

by oOAchilliaOo



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 18:20:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13370448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oOAchilliaOo/pseuds/oOAchilliaOo
Summary: Everything about him is conflicting. One moment he’s just like everyone else, the next he’s an outcast like the rest of them. W.D. warns her to stay away. Lettie tells her to go for it. Her head and her heart in constant conflict with no end in sight.At least that’s what she thinks at first.





	Conflict

She hates that he’s good with the children.

And the thing that she really hates about it, is that she doesn’t hate it at all.

That’s the problem with this whole mess; a back and forth that’s not nearly as fun or as freeing as flying. She wishes that it was just a battle between her head and her heart, because then at least she might be able to convince herself one way or the other.

But it isn’t just her.

W.D. tells her that she’s better off just staying away from Carlyle completely. That sure, he might want her now, but people like _him_ don’t stay with people like _them_. In his mind, Carlyle and she belong in two very separate boxes, divided by class and wealth and colour. To him, these are insurmountable obstacles. Especially in the long run.

She can’t bring herself to disagree with him. He’s right after all, and he’s only trying to protect her.

Lettie, however, has precisely the opposite view.

She says the magic of P.T.’s circus makes them all equal. After all, he’s here isn’t he? Helping them create this show, this family. He’s not like the rest of _them_ and he’s a sweet boy. (She always calls him ‘boy’). When you come right down to it, nothing real or physical is actually stopping them.  At least inside the walls of the circus.

And Anne can’t disagree with her either.

She wants him so badly sometimes. She deserves to have what she wants just as much as everyone else, doesn’t she? Perhaps even more.

The man himself is no less confusing.

He smiles and laughs with Helen, plopping his hat over her eyes and proclaiming that they’re all going to see the queen. She can’t stop herself from laughing with them as he plays with her because wow, the _queen_ and he made it happen, for _her._ Well, not just for her. He made it happen for everyone.

But for _once,_ everyone _includes_ her.

When they go, he and P.T look very fine in their coat-tails, their expensive black suits, well-cut and shiny. She wears her costume. Her sparkly, skimpy costume. Under the lights, while she’s flying around the ring, it makes her look and feel like a fairy princess. Here, it marks her as a caricature, an oddity, a performer. She’s out of place among the well-dressed, _covered_ ladies.

They’re _real_ people. She isn’t.

She draws the too too small cape around herself, trying to cover more of her skin as she studiously avoids his gaze. He’s staring at her, she can feel it like a magnetic pull, and her every instinct is telling her to look at him.

But she can’t, because she’s not sure what she’ll see in his eyes. The worst would be desire, the best would be an apology.

When P.T. pushes him forward to greet the impossibly beautiful woman in the white dress, she chances a look. She isn’t close enough to hear what he’s saying. Their little troop are standing to the side, half in the shadows where they belong. But it almost looks as if P.T. is embarrassing him, and if P.T. can embarrass him then being seen with her definitely would.

She looks away again.

Then, when they get home, he makes it even harder to decide.

He tells them that they’ll all have tickets to see the famous European singer. In a _real_ theatre; she always wanted to go to a real theatre. She doesn’t know the first thing about music, not music like that, (she’d really rather lose herself in the story of a play) but she likes it when Lettie sings so she thinks maybe she’ll enjoy this.

Just when she thought that was as good as it was going to get, he gives her the dress. It still has hints of a costume about it, the glittery butterfly on her chest sparkles when she pulls it free from the box that he’s shyly holding out, but it does at least cover her the way a proper _lady_ should be covered.

He’d noticed.

He’d noticed how she’d felt at the palace and had done something about it.

“Thank you.” Her throat is tight enough to make speaking an effort. She hopes he can tell how grateful she is. 

He smiles that crooked smile and for a moment she wants him to kiss her more than anything.

“Go try it on!” he says, excitedly, pointing towards the backstage dressing area. As she rushes off she sees Lettie and W.D. on the side-lines. Lettie is smiling. W.D. is glowering.  

It stops being confusing at the theatre.

One moment, it’s magical and wondrous. She didn’t expect the music to move her and then somehow she’s holding Carlyle’s hand _in public,_ outside the circus and the way his grip tightens as the music swells has her realising that he’s just as moved as she is.

The next, she sees the people staring, muttering, then come _those looks._

Carlyle doesn’t even look at them, but she does, a second before he drops her hand like it was a red hot poker.

 She wants to do so many things in that moment. To hit him, to cry, to scream… because _he isn’t supposed to be like the others._ But she won’t make more of a spectacle of herself than necessary. She won’t give him that satisfaction.

Instead, she leaves, running back to the only place she’d ever felt _safe_.

Running home.

When the others arrive, informing her in gleeful voices that they’d just marched through the main entrance of the theatre because they decided that they’re done with street entrances, she finds herself getting swept up in the sentiment. Because yes, she _is_ proud of who she is, of how she looks, of what she can do and she _is_ a person, a whole and complete person, and right now she thinks that maybe she’s a better person than he is.

No, she _knows_ she’s a better person than he is.

She puts everything into that night’s show. Pulling W.D. to the side and demanding that they try every dangerous, almost perfected move. She stands proudly, chin up. This is who she is and she will not hide anymore.

None of them will.

They don’t have a ringmaster tonight because one is pandering to the nobility and the other is cowering in the office, but that’s okay they don’t need one.

They don’t need a ring master and she doesn’t need Carlyle.

She thought it was decided.

But things are never so simple as that.

The next moment, Lettie is telling her that P.T has reserved her a ticket at the theatre. A real play. She’s a little nervous about going alone (and fairly certain that it isn’t proper for a lady to go unaccompanied) but she’s _always_ wanted to see a play.

So she goes.

He’s there.

Because _of course_ he’s there. He offers her his arm like she’s a real lady, and she thinks that maybe this time it’ll be different. This time he’d asked her, or at least arranged it. He’d left the ticket at the front desk too, so she _had_ to use the main entrance. Maybe this time she can be a lady. Maybe this time she can be _his_ lady.

She should have known it wouldn’t last long.

They get maybe halfway up the stairs before they have to contend with more of those looks, more of _those_ expressions. This time from his _parents_ , of all people. Once again, he hesitates, and once again, she flees.

When he finds her later, he talks of ‘rewriting the stars’.

He says he doesn’t care what everyone else will say. That he wants her, that he loves her and he’s so earnest that she finds it almost impossible to stop herself from believing him. From giving in. But he does care what ‘they’ say. She knows he does. He’s proved it often enough.

She walks away.

That should be it. That should be the end, for real.

One night, their home is aflame, and while nobody tells her that he’d run back into the building to save her, nobody has to. The fact that he isn’t there does that for them.

She can’t breathe until P.T says that he is and she insists on following him to the hospital.

She stands to the side as the doctors and nurses see to him but somehow it doesn’t feel like the shadows at the palace. Some of the staff give her those looks but somehow they don’t feel the same as the looks she’d been given at the theatre. 

She waits until he’s laid in a bed and left to recover, then she sits beside him. She doesn’t intend to move until he wakes. Because he will wake. He has to. She loves him.

Hours, days later, when he finally opens his eyes and breathes out one hoarse, broken, but still wondrous, ‘you’re here’, she kisses him and this time it doesn’t feel confusing. This time it doesn’t feel complicated.

This time when her heart beats for him, her head doesn’t interfere.

Because she loves him.

And really it’s as simple as that in the end. 


End file.
